of corporate obligations are due to the cost of producing the joint good (which sets the lower bound of extensiveness) and the dependence of its members (which sets the upper bound). Since the market for immanent joint goods is never the pure, frictionless market of the economists, dependence is crucial in determining the extensiveness of these obligations. Finally, (3) variations in compliance with corporate obligations are due to the control capacity of groups.
Thus the solidarity of any group increases to the degree that members are dependent on the group and their behavior is capable of being controlled by the group’s agents. If agents have the means to fully control members’ behavior, solidarity will be a function of their dependence on the group: the less the dependence, the less the solidarity, and vice versa. If agents do not have the means to control members’ behavior, a group is unlikely to attain solidarity regardless of its members’ level of dependence. More formally, dependence and the group’s control capacity are both determinants of solidarity, but each is by itself insufficient. Solidarity can be achieved only by the combined effects of dependence and control.
Whereas members themselves tend to determine variations in control capacity, variations in dependence are often due to environmental factors that are beyond their control. For example, once a state enacts policies that limit its citizens’ rights ‒ to geographic mobility, education, information, association, suffrage, and the like ‒ this raises the dependence of the affected members. Democratization therefore plays a vital role in making group boundaries permeable. In societies where persons have the right to join any group, individualism flourishes and people can become as distinctive as snowflakes. This very distinctiveness, in turn, tends to liberate them from having extensive obligations to any particular group (Simmel 1955 [1922]: 140). In this way an analysis of group solidarity that begins by considering the action of individuals inexorably leads to a conclusion emphasizing the primacy of institutional factors.
The theory holds that individuals comply with corporate obligations when they desire some good that is provided by membership in a given group. In practice, however, the situation is seldom this clear–cut. People can, and often do, belong to the same group for different kinds of reasons. And groups often produce more than one joint good. These points become critical when the analyst must specify the best existing alternative in an individual’s environment. This alternative is identified by the fact that it provides access to the same joint good. But there is always some ambiguity here. If the individual’s interest in joining a group is merely the attainment of fellowship, then this can be fulfilled by membership in nearly any kind of group. For such people the purpose and type of the group is irrelevant: to them a church group and a political party are viable alternatives.
Individuals who participate in a group to gain access to a highly specific good (the pleasure to be gained by playing chamber music) usually have fewer alternatives than people with more diffuse interests. In general, the more specific an individual’s interest in a particular group, the greater that person’s dependence. The specificity of goals is likely to vary across individuals, however, and, worse, it is not directly measurable. Thus there is a subjective element involved in specifying the individual’s dependence.
Despite these qualifications, the theory proposes that the prospects for solidarity will be maximal in situations where individuals face limited sources of benefit, where their opportunities for multiple group affiliation are minimal, and where their social isolation is extreme. But even in these most favorable of circumstances, solidarity can be achieved only when groups have the capacity to monitor members’ behavior so that sanctions can be dispensed to promote compliance.
[…]
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